The reminiscences of childhood, of boyhood, and even of the first entrance into youth, have to almost all men an indescribable charm. Up to this time, we look back upon ourselves with a curious feeling, as if it were not altogether ourselves we were contemplating, but rather some _other being_ who preceded us, and whose thoughts and feelings are the sole remembrance of them we have inherited. We look back upon the frailties of that other self with an unlimited indulgence; we smile at his errors, at his passions, at his griefs; we even sport with his absurdities, and can afford to throw a playful ridicule over all the follies he committed. This child that we are playing with is ourself, but still it is only a child; and we have the fuller right to play with it because it is ourself. No sense of responsibility intervenes to disturb this singular amusement, where the adult is seen toying with and holding in his arms the image of his own infancy. But when this early pre-existent state has passed in review, and the real man is summoned forth upon the scene, we begin to feel that this is indeed ourselves; and we become too implicated and too much involved in the part he performs, to enjoy any longer the position of an imaginary spectator. We are sensitive to the errors, and responsible for the faults, of this other self; we cannot treat him with cavalier indifference; we must be his advocate or his censor. The retrospect assumes a quite different character. Formerly we called up a departed self from some half-fabulous region of the past, and questioned it as to its ways of thinking and acting; we now stand ourselves in the witness-box, and give our testimony; and the best of us must occasionally assume the sullen aspect of an unwilling witness. Formerly we sported with the past absurdity, ridiculed and laughed at it; but now the remembered folly, the sentimental effusion of the youth, the absurd oratorical display, the ridiculous exhibition, of whatever kind it may have been, affords us no amusement. It matters not what the distance of time, the cheek tingles with the reminiscence. What is still more to the purpose, the griefs and afflictions which we have now to summon up are the same in character as those we continue to feel, and their recollection is but a renewal of suffering. The affliction of the child rarely revives an affliction in the man--very often calls up a smile at the idea that so much distress had been felt at so trivial a cause. This is one reason why childhood appears, in our review of human life, so much happier than any other portion of it. We find a mirth in its remembered tears which assuredly we never discovered when they were flowing. But the remembrance of the sorrows of a later period is but sorrow itself, and we only taste again the bitterness of grief.